NY prosecutors investigate police sodomy allegation

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York prosecutors are investigating allegations that a man was beaten and sodomized by police officers in a Brooklyn subway station last week, the Brooklyn District Attorney's office said on Friday.

The incident, made public this week, has sparked charges of police brutality and mirrors the case of Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant who was attacked with a broomstick in a Brooklyn police station in 1997.

Michael Mineo, 24, of Brooklyn, was approached by several uniformed police officers in the early afternoon on October 15 near Brooklyn's Prospect Park on suspicion he was smoking marijuana, said his lawyer, Kevin Mosley.

Mineo, whose parents are Hispanic and white, was followed into a nearby subway station, where the officers forced him to the ground and handcuffed him, Mosley said.

"He felt his pants being pulled ... and then felt something forcibly shoved into his rectum," Mosley said.

Mineo, who works at a tattoo parlor, was issued a summons for disorderly conduct, a police spokesman said.

Mosley said Mineo was hospitalized for five days with rectal injuries and severe abdominal pain, and has returned to the hospital for additional tests.

"Bottom line, it was a gang rape," he said.

Paul Browne, chief spokesman for the police department, said the incident is under investigation by the police Internal Affairs Bureau and that the duty status of the five officers involved in the incident "is unchanged."

"Police officers grappled with an individual, who they observed smoking marijuana, after he had fled and resisted being handcuffed," Browne said.

"His assertion that he was sodomized is not supported by independent civilian witnesses on the scene."

Browne said that two witnesses told police they had heard Mineo scream "that he was being sodomized and Tasered" but that they did not observe police misconduct.

"They heard him say that, but didn't see the officers doing anything like that," said Browne, adding that the officers were not carrying Taser stun guns.

A spokesman for Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes said the prosecutor's office is also investigating the allegations.

Mineo is scheduled to hold a news conference with civil rights leader Al Sharpton on Saturday, but Mosley said Mineo may not be released from the hospital in time.

In May, Sharpton organized a series of demonstrations to protest the acquittal of three New York City police officers in the shooting death of Sean Bell, 23, who died in a barrage of 50 shots on his wedding day in 2006.

In the Louima case, one officer was sentenced to 30 years in prison for his role in the attack and a second officer was given five years for perjury.

(Reporting by Edith Honan; editing by Michelle Nichols and Mohammad Zargham)